


Invader Invasion

by YokoHasagagua



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Alternate Universe, Competent Zim (Invader Zim), Dib/Zim if you squint your eyes, Invader Invasion AU, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28356729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YokoHasagagua/pseuds/YokoHasagagua
Summary: Life after the Florpus was weird, not that it wasn't weird before... but with the new changes in Zim's behaviour, is a new type of weird that he doesn't know how to deal with it.Still chasing after the irken, he could get involved in a huge conspiracy on which the fate of the Irken Empire, Earth and even the Universe could be at stake.
Relationships: Dib/Zim (Invader Zim), Eventual Dib/Zim
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Invader Invasion

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!  
> This my first work in the Invader Zim fandom and also my fist work that I write completly in english, is not my native language so I would appreciate very much if you can point me where I had grammar or spelling errors.  
> That being said I would like to thank you for taking the time to read, and I hope that you enjoy it. :)

Life after the Florpus was weird, decided Dib. Well… not that in wasn’t before, but it was a new type of weird.

In essence, it was pretty similar from before. His dad still didn’t believe in the paranormal, Gaz was still terrifying and Zim was still irritating.

But there were things that were different. Things that had changed and were impossible to ignore.

Besides the obvious changes, like the addition of Clembrane to their family, there were other ones. Others more… subtle and unexpected.

Some were welcome.

Like his father. Sure, his dad still didn’t believe in anything that remotely relates with paranormal business and still thinks that all the Florpus was a collective hallucination caused by the Membracelet, but at least he stopped calling him crazy or trying to send him to the crazy house. He also had tried to talk to him about his engineering projects and investigations, he even looked to be genuinely interested when Dib talked about the last ridiculous paranormal theory that he was trying to demystify (even he has limits, example 1: Chickenfoot).

His dad had taken to heart the apparent revelation in his hallucination that Dib probably thought that his dad wasn’t proud of him. And he was determinated to change it. His dad had started spending more time at home with them, making sure to be at least every day for breakfast and working more days in the lab downstairs than not. That was sometimes good, and sometimes bad.

On one hand their dad was really trying to spend more time with them and that was cool, on the other, he and Gaz realized that having his dad at home meant that they didn’t have some of the freedoms that they were used to have, like spending whole nights playing videogames or leaving the house for a couple of days for cryptid hunting.

It didn’t make up for the years of neglect, but at least he was trying.

Gaz had changed too, but in her case it was something hard to notice unless you know her very well. And given that he had known her since she was in diapers, even had change them, it had been impossible for him to not see it. She was more tolerant and patient, especially with Dib. While she still had bad character, and still was absolutely terrifying (he’s not afraid to admit it, he may be the older brother, but Gaz had always been the scariest of them), in situations where she had either beat him to a pulp or threaten him to rip his pancreas and then making him eat it, she now contents to send him death glares.

Like last night, he’s pretty sure that he almost talk his dad and Gaz ears of form how long was his rant about his theories of where Zim had disappeared again, but she hadn’t react at all, opting for ignoring it in favor of her game instead of the usual beating and the snarl to shut the hell up, she had even wait for him to finish before she threw him a napkin and told him to shut up and eat his dinner.

He was trying to return the favor by trying to be less annoying to her and giving her more space. After all, both of them were growing up and soon she’ll start doing the typical weird teenage girl’s stuff. Ewwww! No. Not thinking about that.

And then there was Zim.

Of course Zim couldn’t be exempt from changes.

Nothing remarkable happens in his life without Zim being the cause of it.

Up until the Florpus incident, Dib had never noticed how much of his life revolved around the alien. How much of his decisions, big and small, were consequences of Zim’s plans and actions. He couldn’t deny it anymore. Not after that the only thing that the green menace needed to get him out of the way was to spend two whole years hidden laughing in a toilet and wait for Dib to do the rest.

He could admit that that had been pathetic.

Fortunately, he had learned his lesson and wasn’t keen in repeating the experience. Especially with Zim’s new behavior.

That would had driven him mad just a little time ago.

Unlike the other changes in his life (excluding Clembrane) that had happened gradually, Zim’s change had been almost instantaneous.

After the Florpus fiasco and Zim’s ultimate failure and defeat, he would have thought that either the alien would be back to his usual manic self obsessively dedicated to his plans of conquering Earth, or going back to his shmoppy phase after receiving no answer to his calls to his leaders.

But he hadn’t.

Instead he had been acting more cheerful, relaxed, like he had removed a heavy burden from his shoulders. Sure, he still is the same annoying, obnoxious, bratty, loud and egocentric Zim as always. But he’s different too.

And that wasn’t the only weird new thing form Zim. Well, weirder than the usual Zim weird.

When the new school year begun, Dib wasn’t surprised to see Zim siting at his desk after two years of absence like nothing had happened. What it was a surprise was the new and more human look of the irken’s disguise. 

Zim had gotten rid of the wig and contacts in favor of what it seemed to be a disguise generated by a hologram projector similar to Tak’s, he even had come with a somewhat CREDIBLE excuse for his absence and new looks. He had told everyone that all that time he had been back at his natal country taking a new and experimental treatment for his skin condition and had even gotten prosthetic a nose and ears. Of course everybody had believed him and now Zim had an excuse for his new looks, his long absence, and the following ones.

Those were new too.

Every so often Zim vanished from a few days to a week or two without any explanation more than he still had to get regular checkups to verify that his treatment was going well. Everybody believed it.

And just like in those two years, Dib couldn’t figure out where the hell he went.

Somehow all his cameras but the ones outside of Zim’s base had stopped working, so he knows, or assumes, that Zim hasn’t left, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing inside. What was he planning? How to conquer the Earth? Humanity’s ultimate demise? Dib's own destruction?

To make it even weirder, it seem like Zim had completely lost interest in those two things too. Zim’s plans had always had (with Zim’s crazy train thoughts and weird logic) the ultimate goal of Earth’s doom. Lately it seemed that that was the last thing in the alien’s mind.

All in all, Dib would dare to say that for the first time in all the years that he had known him, Zim seemed to be genuinely happy.

It didn't make any sense.

Dib was so glad that he had grown enough self-control to avoid turn to a chair again, because Zim was almost driving him crazy.

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It had been a year since the Florpus and Zim’s last real attempt to destroy Earth.

Dib glared at Zim’s empty seat. The stupid bug was missing again and he still didn’t know out where he went and what he did when he disappeared.

At first he thought that maybe he was preparing his next plan, something maybe even worse than teleporting Earth right to the Irken’s Armada path.

But the next big plan never came.

Instead, Zim had launched a series of small plans surprisingly more cunning and effective than they have ever been and, even more incredible, he had won. Multiple times. It was as if the alien had finally decided to put into practice all those years of military training he had bragged about, and Dib had found himself tasting the flavor of defeat more times than not. But against all of his expectations, Earth was still standing.

In all of those plans, it turned out that either the doom and death machines were fake, or Zim’s ultimate goal had been something utterly stupid that had nothing to do with invading plans.

Not to mention that every fight that they had in the last months had been tamer than the previous one, and all had had ended with fewer and fewer wounds on Dib’s body, something that he was thankful for, he had enough scars (physical and emotional) as it was.

It looked like all of Zim´s schemes had been less about conquering Earth and more of a plan to see how much of a nuisance he could be to Dib. And the little pest was succeeding.

Zim could be in his lab right now creating a device that could mean the extermination of all bees on the planet, or a giant, dangerous looking destruction artifact, that in the end it would turn out to be just a harmless big purple paint bomb.

It was extremely frustrating.

But it was also fun.

It was incredibly exhilarating. Even when he consciously knew that at the end of the day his home planet wouldn’t be in shambles, the trill of the hunt, the excitement of the fight, the mental challenge that every chase brought him was so addicting that he couldn't stop himself from taking the bait every single time that the little bug hung it in front of his face.

Zim had also started acting friendlier with Dib. He had stopped calling him crazy in public and in school had started acting like the whole alien and cryptid things were just jokes between the two of them, that had actually prevented his classmates from using the crazy cards on him and some of them had started treating him less like a freak. Sometimes they even played along thinking that it was just a huge joke. Dib couldn’t decide if he liked it or not.

Zim’s new friendlier attitude hadn’t been limited to the school grounds. Sometimes, whenever they weren’t fighting, they talk. At lunch, between classes, when they walked home after school, after their fights, they talk. About their classes and how easy they are, about their classmates and how they had become even more stupid with age, about how blind and oblivious the humans could be most of the time, about the space and other planets that Zim had visited before, about Dib´s latest hunt, about Earth customs and manners, about Irk’s. They talk.

And sometimes they hang out. Sometimes after school, or after Zim kicked his ass, they would go for ice cream, or to de movies, or to the mall, or sometimes they went to each other’s house. Sometimes when they weren’t planning to hang out, Dib would found Zim already in his home playing videogames and eating candy with Gaz. Dib was shocked when he found out that his sister and the alien had bond over their love for videogames and roasting him. 

In short, Dib no longer knew how to call their relationship. They weren’t enemies anymore, but he wasn’t sure if they could be called friends.

Dib was so confused.

For years they had played their roles. Zim the evil alien invader sent to destroy his world, Dib the hero and Earth’s defender. Enemies destined to fight until the other couldn’t rise up anymore. Until either Earth was under the Irken Empire’s control, or the alien was strapped to an autopsy table. Those had been the only possible results.

But things had change. The rules of the game were different and Dib couldn’t decide if he liked the new ones more.

Zim wasn’t actively trying to destroy the world, Dib didn’t want to dissect him anymore. They were getting along, Zim was telling him more about space than humanity would ever know. Dib remembered his childhood dreams of meeting a friendly alien and getting to travel to planets never seen by humans before. Was he being too naive to wish that it could still happen?

The ringing of the bell that marked the end of today’s classes brought him out of his mussing.

Dib hurriedly put his notes in his backpack and quickly walked out of the classroom, trying to get home as fast as he could.

Today was the day! Today he would find out where Zim keep disappearing! He was sure!

Dib didn´t bother to wait for Gaz, she probably used her inhuman powers and somehow she was already at the house.

Dib run all the way home easily dodging people and obstacles as he made his way, all those years running from Zim had paid off. Maybe Zim had given up on destroying the Earth, maybe Dib didn’t want to expose him anymore, maybe Zim had become the closest thing to a best friend that he could ever have, but he still was going to mess with whatever thing the alien was doing. After all, they had been playing the game for years, why stop now if it was so fun?

Dib went back home a few hours later unsuccessful and sore after being zapped multiple times by the guardian gnomes. “Well, at least he downpowered the laser eyes otherwise I would have been disintegrated” thought Dib while rubbing a particular sore spot.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Zim watched while holding back his laughter, how his nemesis latest attempt of breaking in his base was thwarted by his robotic servants.

-He doesn’t give up easily, doesn’t he? –said and amused voice behind him.

Zim turned his back to the screen so he could look at the speaker. –No, he doesn’t. Otherwise he wouldn’t be worthy enough to be the nemesis of The Great Zim! –He said proudly.

-Just nemesis? –Asked another voice in the same tone, unlike the other it was a female one.

–Neither a possible ally. –said Zim reluctantly after a little silence.

-Yeah sure, let’s pretend we believe you kid. –said the first one clearly amused.

-You, and me, and everyone in this base knows that if you really had hated him as much as you said you did it, you would have killed him within a week of meeting him. –commented the second.

-¡LIES! –screamed Zim making the other two wince at the loud noise.

-Irk Zim, how can you still scream like that? –asked the mile while rubbing his temple.

–Come on, oh Great Zim, we still have much work to do. –said the female trying to distract him so he would stop screaming –You might be our Almighty Tallest’s favorite but that doesn’t exclude you of having to finish your work quota.

Zim stuck out his tongue at the female one knowing what she was doing but letting it pass, giving the screen one last look he stood up to follow her to the lift that would take them to labs levels.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Dib walked back to his house dragging his feet. He resisted the impulse to scream a curse when he slipped and almost kissed the concrete, for the third time in the last hour. He was tired, covered from head to toe in slimy mucus and empty-handed.

People avoid getting close to him, going so far as to cross the street when they noticed him. Fair enough, he looked like drowned rat, and smelled like one. 

Dib could almost hear Zim’s mocking voice laughing at his misery. Admittedly, it probably wasn’t one of his more brilliant plans but he was getting desperate. What else was he supposed to do? It had been two years since the Florpus incident and Zim’s return and he wasn’t any close to solve the mystery, Dib had tried everything he could though and was running low of ideas.

To be honest, he didn’t really expected that following Gir would work, but he hoped to get a least a hint or some kind of revelation that would helped him to resolve the mystery. Instead, he had ended up chasing the hyperactive minion all over the city and trough all kinds of weird and gross places; Dib really didn’t want to know what was inside the container he fell into when he was chasing the little robot inside an old abandoned factory, but the smell was foul. He was going to need at least seven showers and to burn the clothes he was wearing to get rid of the stench.

Internally sighing, he lamented his current state. ‘Just another day in the life of Earth’s savior’. He felt his mood improve a little when he noticed that he was already at his street.

Dib took of his shoes before entering his house trying to avoid leaving goo shoeprints in the floor but realized that it was useless when he noticed that his socks were soaked too. Sighting in defeat, Dib tried to get to his room without making any noise so he could at least clean himself and change his clothes before getting something to eat. He was already dreading the scold that both Gaz and his father were going to give him for getting the floor dirty, so he decided that postponing the inevitable was the best strategy.

-Did you enjoy your walk Dib-stink?

Dib startled and this time he did fall to the floor when he slipped at the sudden voice. He heard a very familiar and annoying laugh. Grumbling curses under his breath he raised his head from the floor and his eyes met a familiar pair of magenta ones and a smug smile of sharp teeth.

-This is all your fault. –grunted Dib glaring at the alien sitting comfortably on the couch.

-I don’t see how it is my fault that you stink more than usual, Dib-dumb. –said Zim faking ignorance.

-Can it. I know that it is.

Zim stopped his ratter poor charade of innocence and gaved him one of his patented superiority looks. –Well, that’s what you earn for following Gir, Dib-thing. I don’t know why you though that it was going to work. Maybe your head it’s getting so big that your brain is starting to drip from your ears.

Ignoring the usual pun at his head (is not that big!) Dib resisted the impulse to get up and punch the cocky bug in his stupid green face. –First, I didn’t actually think it would work. Second, I know that you ordered Gir to make me chase him all over the town.

-After all this time I thought you would know that I can’t order Gir to do something and expect him to do it.

-I don’t know how you did it, but he has been doing better. We walked by the park three times and he didn’t eat a single squirrel.

Zim sat up straighter and his antennas happily flickering, feeling really proud of that particular achievement. It hadn’t been easy, but after a little of adjustments and a lot of behavior training, he had managed to make his minion obey him. –Don’t change the subject. That still doesn’t explain why you look _and_ smell like a Flobberglomparas had eaten _and_ regurgitated you. –He said making a face of disgust.

-What’s a flober-…? Whatever. As if you didn't know. You send Gir to run all over the sewer system, the chemical waste dump and other disgusting places that I don’t want to name right now.

-Hummm… I only told him to keep you away from the base however he wanted for a couple of hours. I expected him to make you run and buy him food from every fast food stand in this horrible city. He exceeded my expectations.

-Why did you wanted me away? What are you planning? Where do you go Zim?! –he angrily demanded while he getting up and approaching the other.

Zim gagged at the stench and jumped from the sofa, antennae pulled back trying to get away from the horrid smell. Both stopped when Gaz’s voice resounded in the living room.

-Dib! Stop bothering Zim and go take a shower now! You’re stinking the house! –she said while getting out of the kitchen, carrying several bags of different snacks and junk food in her arms. Minimoose floating behind her carrying a pack of sodas.

-I wasn´t…! –a warning growl from Gaz cut his indignant response, and for the first time paid attention to the room. There were more snacks, sodas and some pizza boxes all over the floor and the coffee table, the TV was on and his sister had moved her video game consoles from her room to the living room. He could also see several bags of take out from Zim’s favorite vegan place and even some packages of irken food. They were just about to start one of their gamming and movies nights.

–Fine. –grumbled Dib giving up, he turned away and started climbing the stairs. –We aren’t done with this conversation, Zim. And leave some cheese pizza to me! –Dib screamed before leaving.

-I can’t promise anything! –I don’t know what you’re talking about human!

Were the responses he got before leaving the room.

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30 minutes later Dib walked downstairs feeling a lot of better and relieved that he was finally rid of the foul smell. Looking at the hall he was surprised to see that the goo puddles he had disappeared and the scent of lemon cleaner permeated the house.

A quick glance to the living room showed that neither his sister nor the alien had moved from their places in the sofa, so they hadn’t cleaned it up. Zim still wasn’t wearing his ridiculous disguise, so their father still wasn’t home. That only leave one option. A crashing sound coming from the kitchen confirmed his suspicions.

-Clembrane is home?

-Yeah. He arrived like 10 minutes ago and cleaned up your mess. –answered Gaz without taking her eyes off the screen, fingers smashing the buttons of the controller non stopping.

Another loud crash rang from the kitchen.

-He does know that you already ordered food, right?

-He said that he’s going to make dessert. We managed to convince him not to make pudding. –Zim let out a series of clicking noises that sound a lot like a curse while frantically pushing the buttons.

Ignoring the loud noises coming from the kitchen Dib took one of the pizza boxes from one of the piles that the par had bought he walked avoiding the mess of food, drinks wrappings and Gir in the floor and sat on his father’s favorite chair.

While eating and watching his sister destroy his (reluctantly admitted) best and only true friend, Dib couldn’t stop reflecting again on all the changes his life had taken since the first time Zim appeared in his classroom.

-Hey, isn’t time for dad to come home? Aren’t going to put your disguise?

-Your father unit called. He said he´s too busy working on the contract details for a project with another famous science company and won’t come home today.

-He also said that he´s taking the whole weekend off to make it up to us.

Dib nodded in thanks but he doubted that either of the saw it, neither had moved their eyes form the screen.

Yes. His life was different form before. Lots of things had changed since Zim arrived to Earth, and even more since the Florpus Fiasco. Life had just become weirder since the alien appeared in his life and he doesn’t really know how to deal with this new weird.

“But… I guess is not a bad new type of weird”


End file.
